09/08/10: Articles Of Faith New Video
Chicago's finest are back! A preview of their upcoming appearance at Riotfest:

07/30/10: 16 Horsepower Poll
Alternative Tentacles and Glitterhouse Records are planning a fan-requested 16 Horsepower compilation for release this fall. The band wanted to know what songs have stood the test of time with its fans. To request your favorite 16 Horsepower song for the collection, fill out this poll by Sept 1st, 2010! You can vote for up to ten songs.

07/26/10: (1964-2010) Todd Sampson of M.I.A.
We are sad to bear the news that M.I.A. singer Todd Sampson passed away this weekend. This Las Vegas Weekly article by Spencer Patterson filed July 25th, 2010 provides some background but does not have a cause of death determined. Friend and photographer of the band Jesse Nabers informs of us a memorial show being organized, we will post that information when it becomes available to us.I am totally shocked. I was just getting to know Todd, as a great musician and performer, and above all as a friend. He was a real natural.
Here at Alternative Tentacles, we are devastated. Our hearts and wishes go out to his son Daz, his girlfriend, the MIA family, and all those who loved him.
Whatever you do, please don't give up. Todd never did. He will be truly missed. - Jello Biafra

06/22/10: Busy Busy Bands
Just a heads up on some AT-related news:
Grit TV has some footage of Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine playing on a boat in New York for the UXO Concert Tour. You can see Kimo Ball wearing a Witch Hunt T Shirt, as well as interviews with Iraq Veterans Against the War.More GRITtv
Akimbo's Jersey Shores is coming out on vinyl for the first time! Alternative Tentacles is reissuing the 2008 tribute to shark attacks (CD is on Neurot) with a 180 gram LP with gatefold.
Alice Donut is posting fan covers of their songs on their website. If you've got a cover concept you've been sitting on, this is the perfect time to bust it out.
Fish Karma performs the Rock Opera Halloween In America and celebrates its release at Hotel Congress in Tucson on June 26th.
If you did not hear about John Cobbett from Ludicra's emergency appendectomy in the midst of their US tour, read on! John is saddled with a bunch of medical bills, so a friend of the band set up a fundraiser selling photo prints of the band from their homecoming show. The most recent Ludicra album, The Tenant, is available from Profound Lore, and Life Is Abuse just reissued the first album Hollow Psalms on double LP.
Filth recently played their first shows since 1993! They played as part of a celebration for the 20th anniversary of The List! Here's a review of their Gilman show by Gabe Meline.

06/16/10: Now we are 31!
To celebrate our 31st birthday, we're going to enclose a surprise CD in every order placed between now and Midnight tomorrow, June 17, 2010 (Pacific time).

Events marking the 20th anniversary of the 1990 pipe bomb attack on Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney will take place in the Bay Area over the course of 2 days:
* On Sunday, May 23, an event dubbed "Revolutionary Ecology" (the title of one of Judi's best essay collections) will take place at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley, with a panel of speakers, music, film and an exciting historical exhibit.
* On Monday, May 24, the actual anniversary, people from near and far will gather at the site where a motion-triggered bomb exploded under Judi's car seat, nearly killing her and forever changing the Earth First! movement. The location is on Park Blvd. in Oakland just south of the MacArthur Freeway.

Details for both events will be forthcoming soon. Please mark your calendar and plan to join us in honoring Judi and her work.

We are raising funds to cover expenses of this commemoration, including the hall rental and travel funds for out of town speakers. We want to events to be free and accessible to all. Cosponsors include Earth First!, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH). All funds will go directly to support the event.

Or we can collect tax- deductible donations through the non-profit BACH, where you can contribute online at http://headwaterspreserve.org/donate.php and please be sure to put Judi Bari on the notes or memo line. --Karen Pickett, event coordinator"

05/01/10: CREDIT CARDS WORK AGAIN!
That's right, you can once again use Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express to secure Bat Stuff here on our website!

04/06/10: BloodHag Call It A Day (Is It Cause of Hot Tub Time Machine?)
From the desk of Professor Jake Stratton: "After fifteen years BloodHag is calling it a day. We're packing up our boxes of books and moving on to other bands and endeavors. Each one of us has many creative irons in the fire and we had already increased literacy rates in Washington to a dangerous degree. There was little more for us to do, except play one last show with our favorite bands.
Make sure you show up to the Funhouse on Friday April 9th, because this rare perfect storm of nerd mayhem only comes around once in a blue moon! DON'T MISS THIS SHOW!"
CAPTURED! BY ROBOTS
BLOODHAG
STOVOKOR
The Funhouse
Friday April 9 $12 9pm doors 21+

03/31/10: Triclops! record release April 4th
Triclops! celebrate the release of their newest album, Helpers On The Other Side, this Sunday at the Bottom of the Hill (tickets here).
You can also check out this feature on them this week in the SF Weekly (interview by Brian Moss) who also awarded them best prog/psych/punk locals in 2009. This early 5 pm all ages show also features comedians Brent Weinbach and Alex Koll, Florida's Tubers, and SF School of Rock.

03/25/10: Jello & the West Memphis Three auction!
Jello Biafra, Other Artists Donate Autographed
Items to Aid WM3 Defense Fund
March 24, 2010: San Francisco, Calif. - Jello Biafra and other artists will be auctioning selected autographed items to raise funds for the West Memphis Three (www.wm3.org) -- Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin. Having no physical evidence, the three teenagers were pinpointed, harassed and accused of murdering and mutilating three elementary school children. Damien Echols sits on death row, Jason Baldwin was sentenced to life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus forty. In July 2007 DNA evidence proved these three young men should never have been convicted.

The auctions will last for 17 days-from March 31 to April 16th-one day for each year the West Memphis Three have spent behind bars. June 3, 2010 will mark the 17th year anniversary that Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley, and Jason Baldwin have been behind bars for a crime they did not commit.

A guitar used by Michale Graves in the recording of the album Illusions with songs written by Damien Echols including the album art on the guitar, a pressing of Dead Kennedys 2nd album, Plastic Surgery Disasters vinyl signed by Biafra. Boondock Saints' Norman Reedus auctioning off his photography. CDs & posters signed by Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon). George Clayton Johnson (author of Twilight Zone/Ocean's Eleven - 1960s) signed book, Counting Crows signed CDs & promo pic, Chris Cornell signed CDs, Matisyahu signed CDs & promo pic, portrait of Debbie Harry by Mick Rock ("The Man Who Shot the 70s").

01/16/10: MLK holiday- a radical look (& AT closed Monday)
Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. day, so both AT & the US Post Office will be closed. Mailorder packages will be sent & messages returned on Tuesday January 19th.

The scores of politicians who spoke on Jan. 18 about the pressing need to fulfill King's "Dream," for example, were generally endorsing a simplified, static portrait of King. Meanwhile, we have been bombarded with a steady stream of television commercials, advertisements and newspaper articles that imply King was merely a liberal reformer, whose sole preoccupation was civil rights. Where was the discussion of King's plans to transform the structures of power and privilege in society? Who remembered King's call for a "radical revolution" of American values? As historian Vincent Harding has remarked, "It appears as if the price for the first national holiday honoring a black man is the development of a massive case of national amnesia."

We further need to be reminded that King demanded a total restructuring of our foreign policies, and-unlike Jesse Jackson and many other "leftists" of our era-he would have had nothing but scorn for President Clinton's criminal bombings of Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, King began speaking out against U.S. militarism as early as 1965. Most symptomatic of this, of course, was the "nightmarish conflict" in Vietnam, which he said was "one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world."

Following King's famous speech at the 1963 March on Washington, FBI Assistant Director Louis Sullivan charged that King had become (in a curious pair of adjectives), "The most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country."

01/11/10: Credit Card ordering out of order briefly!
If you've been trying to order via credit card on our site over the weekend, you'll know that it's not possible. We're working to get this fixed, but in the meantime you can use the paypal option on-line or use one of the other methods on our FAQ page

12/17/09: Alternative Tentacles family and friends 2009 lists
More on the way...

Jon Weisnewski - Akimbo
10. When Max the cat jumped on Maria's lap, farted, and then ran away.
9. 2012. Best comedy of the decade!
8. Napalm Death - Time Waits for No Slave
7. Russian Circles - Geneva
6. Future of the Left - Travels Well with Myself and Another
5. Seeing Jesus Lizard, Black, Elk, Nomeansno, and Future of the Left in the month of October.
4. Muppets cover of Bohemian Rhapsody
3. Sniping fools with Thermal Vision in Modern Warfare 2.
2. Converge - Axe to Fall
1. Keyboard Cat